The Year She Stopped Being Crazy for Him novel Chapter 280

Sitting at the head of the boardroom table, Hassan lifted his gaze to meet Natalie's.

His eyes were striking and distinctly narrow, the irises a fathomless, inky black. With heavy, lowered lids, his stare washed over her with a terrifyingly remote, frigid indifference—like a thick, suffocating fog rolling over a distant mountain peak.

Looking into those bottomless eyes, in that exact moment, she already knew his answer.

His voice was a low, emotionless rumble. "The lab results are already out."

Hearing the brutal confirmation straight from his lips felt like someone had shoved a wad of soaking wet cotton down her throat. She couldn't draw a breath. A sickening, agonizing ache clawed its way up her chest, burning the back of her throat and stinging her eyes.

She dug her fingernails brutally into her palms, forcing back the burning tears, demanding her face remain entirely composed and unbothered.

She wanted to simply swallow the humiliation and endure it, exactly like she had every single time before.

In front of this vicious crowd, she desperately needed to maintain at least a shred of her dignity.

But a second later, the scalding heat behind her eyes became unbearable. A raw, devastating wave of pure emotion surged violently upward, suffocating her lungs and overflowing her composure.

And in that fleeting second, absolute clarity washed over her.

The man she had fallen in love with was completely dead and gone. He was no longer the Hassan standing right in front of her. The man she loved would never have doubted her so easily, and he would never have sat back and watched a room full of jackals tear her apart.

He would never have cornered her like an animal, ruthlessly cutting off every avenue of escape until she was pushed entirely to the brink of destruction.

Now that the executive board was fully convinced she was the saboteur, they would absolutely annihilate her.

The catastrophic failure at today's bidding conference would cost the Carlson Group an unfathomable fortune.

If she couldn't somehow clear her name, these people possessed enough power and venom to legally ruin her. They could easily throw her in federal prison.

She urgently needed hard, irrefutable proof that would render the perfume evidence entirely void.

When she first realized the fragrance was missing back in Mothria Country, despite assuming it was an insignificant loss at the time, Natalie had still filed a full, documented police report for the stolen goods.

She desperately needed to retrieve those exact police records.

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